architecting an agile enterprise -...

Architecting an Agile EnterpriseOrganizations are adopting Agile practices that allow them to recognize project flaws and change direction on a dime.

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1 2 3 4EDITOR’S NOTE ENTERPRISES ARE

HAVING AN AGILE, MOBILE MOMENT

PROJECT POST-MORTEMS SHOULDN’T BE AN AFTERTHOUGHT

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1EDITOR’S NOTE

Agility Rules

If you’re like me, there are a couple of go-to games on your iPhone (or

smartphone of choice) to while away a few moments between meetings. Mine

is “Snood.” Unfortunately, I’ve long mastered all the levels and have been beg-

ging for more. “Angry Birds” users don’t have this problem, because maker

Rivio comes out with frequent updates. That’s the difference between being

Agile and not being Agile.

So thinks J Schwan, founder and president of Solstice Mobile, a Fortune

500 consulting firm. In this SearchCIO.com Handbook on Agile develop-

ment, Schwan tells Executive Editor Christina Torode, “Consumers have been

trained to understand that [mobile] apps are iterative in terms of how they

are developed. When you downloaded Angry Birds, for example, it started

with 30 levels, but then they released another 30 and so on. We are trained

for these app updates to occur and we are more forgiving if it doesn’t have all

the features that we want because we know the app will continue to evolve.”

Maxim CTO Michael Le Du faces the same issues in trying to turn around

mobile apps quickly and within budget. “The challenge we have now is trying

to figure out the most cost-effective way to get mobile apps to the market-

place without having to spend a lot of resources and time to do that. ... We

can apply Agile practices like small iterations and rapid development to any

of it.” So make like Angry Birds and keep your users happy. And yo, Snood

developers, show a player some love. n

Scot Petersen

Editorial Director, CIO/IT Strategy Media Group [email protected]

mailto:spetersen%40techtarget.com?subject=


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2APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Enterprises are Having an Agile, Mobile Moment

Maxim CTO Michael Le Du is trying to sort through the same dilemma

many IT leaders face these days: how to quickly turn around mobile apps on a

budget.

Le Du might feel even more pressure than other CTOs: Competition is

fierce in his business, with plenty of other men’s magazines jockeying for the

attention of the coveted smartphone audience.

On the bright side, Le Du has a tried-and-true strategy. As a self-described

“Agile Unitarian” (as opposed to “Agile dogmatist”), he plans to apply his

Agile best practices of choice to mobile application development projects—

namely, small iterations with minimal features and functionality that are

driven by end-user feedback.

Le Du took the same approach with the relaunch of Maxim’s website last

January. At the time, he moved Maxim off its legacy content management

system and put it on a Drupal open source Web development platform. These

days, he has his eye on converting video content to play on mobile devices,

for his readers’ viewing pleasure.

“The challenge we have now is trying to figure out the most cost-effec-

tive way to get mobile apps to the marketplace without having to spend a lot

of resources and time to do that,” Le Du said. He’s considering third-party

services, including Brightcove Inc.’s App Cloud, to build mobile apps using

HTML5 and JavaScript; Sencha Inc. to develop HTML5-based Web apps; and

RubyMotion, based on MacRuby, to build iOS apps.

“The good thing is the underlying technology doesn’t matter,” Le Du said.

“We can apply Agile practices like small iterations and rapid development to

any of it.”


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THE MARRIAGE OF MOBILE AND AGILE

At Chicago-based Solstice Mobile, an Agile Scrum-based framework is the

method of choice, and the consulting firm’s Fortune 500 clients are fine with

that, even though it takes some getting used to, said J Schwan, the firm’s

founder and president.

Many enterprises are more familiar and comfortable with predictive soft-

ware development approaches like waterfall, but the Agile Scrum approach is

really designed to accommodate the unpredictable nature of certain projects,

like mobile app dev, that may need to turn on a dime, he said.

Traditional software development methods aren’t set up to handle change

very easily, and the pace of change is accelerating. “The future is less and less

clear, so instead of trying to avoid it, let’s embrace that as the new reality,” he

said.

The marriage of mobile app dev and Agile methodologies is being driven

largely by time to market, Schwan said, as companies need to respond quickly

to new opportunities or respond to a competitor’s new capability. But what is

equally driving this Agile/mobile app development partnership is consumer

behavior.

“Consumers have been trained to understand that these [mobile] apps

are iterative in terms of how they are developed,” he said. “When you down-

loaded Angry Birds, for example, it started with 30 levels, but then they re-

leased another 30 and so on. We are trained for these app updates to occur

and we are more forgiving if it doesn’t have all the features that we want be-

cause we know the app will continue to evolve.”

As a result, enterprises are bringing mobile apps out of the gate more

quickly by involving end users in the development process. “That’s the un-

derlying tenant of Agile: making the end user part of the development pro-

cess and utilizing iterations to drive the product forward,” Schwan said.

“With mobile app dev, that [approach] just makes sense.”

But the user-feedback loop has its downfalls, particularly for companies

developing customer-facing apps, as few want all of the negative feedback

flowing through the app store reviews. Instead, Schwan advises companies to


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build an app-feedback mechanism into the app. “The majority of all feedback

will stay in the app feedback mechanism that you can control, respond to and

develop new features based on,” he said.

AN AGILE STATE OF MIND

Le Du also foresees Agile becoming the de facto approach to application de-

velopment, mobile or not. But he believes it will take longer to make its way

into the largest of organizations.

“I’ve seen that they have very engrained cultures where it’s hard to intro-

duce Agile because business folks like to control processes and plan every-

thing out, even if it’s not the most efficient approach,” he said.

On the other hand, Le Du, like Schwan, believes that since mobile app dev

is still fairly new, larger companies are more willing to use mobile projects as

a starting point for an Agile practice.

Underestimating the power of corporate culture to sink new ideas—even a

small Agile mobile pilot project—is a mistake, Schwan agrees.

“A lot of [project and application development] methodologies are set up

to promote boundaries and keep areas of responsibility very clearly sepa-

rated, with a lot of documentation around those boundaries,” he said. “Agile

is all about breaking down boundaries, encouraging transparency, frequent

feedback loops and less documentation in the development process.”

Agile methodologies also break down boundaries between the business and

IT by diffusing the blame game. With Agile iterations and feedback loops,

business stakeholders aren’t expected to predict what the business, market

and apps will be a year out, and at the same time IT won’t be held to an unat-

tainable timetable based on those predictions.

“IT can say to the business, ‘We don’t expect you to have all the answers or

know exactly what you want in six, nine or 12 months,’ and IT won’t be told

by the business, ‘You got it wrong because you couldn’t predict how long it

would take,’“ Schwan said. “Instead, it’s about focusing on the most impor-

tant features first, building that, and then looking at what’s next.”

And if Agile methodologies are not the organization’s cup of tea, there is


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always service-oriented architecture to consider. Gartner Inc. research vice

president Brian Prentice has found that enterprises are having a hard time

reconciling the demand for application portfolio consolidation with the

trend toward developing many smaller mobile apps. He’s starting to see or-

ganizations address this by developing their own software development kits

[SDKs], as Apple has for iOS developers.

“What an IT department can do is provide its own set of services and ca-

pabilities that any developer—whether they are inside or outside the IT de-

partment—can write to in a consistent way, to have consistent services and

consistent data management,” Prentice said.

A media company in Europe, for example, developed a mobile app for the

World Cup in 2010 that linked people to the product it was selling—the me-

dia and advertising around the World Cup—while also tracking teams, play-

ers and scores. The app had a huge number of downloads; when the World

Cup ended, users didn’t need it anymore so they deleted it. But, from the

company’s perspective, the app’s usefulness didn’t end there.

“In 2012, this company [also] had the media rights to the Euro Cup and de-

veloped a completely different app that was just as disposable. But the people

doing the developing could use the same set of APIs that the IT department

created for the World Cup app,” Prentice said. “This is when we start talking

about a service-oriented architecture, because SOA is a great way to achieve

this type of outcome.”

Regardless of the approach taken, one thing is clear. The march towards

mobile is altering enterprise IT strategies, and one way to take hold and

embrace the rapid change mobility is causing is through Agile best practices.

After all, “Agile is about being able to pivot,” Schwan said. —Christina Torode


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3PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Post-Mortems Shouldn’t be an Afterthought

Every team can improve its ability to deliver by changing how it looks at

and conducts an assessment of its lessons learned.

People often say to me, “My projects have to be waterfall. Is there any-

thing—from Lean and Agile—that I can begin to use to improve delivery

without changing how my projects are delivered?”

My answer is always the same: “Yes!”

Traditional “lessons-learned” sessions are useless for three key reasons:

■n Lessons-learned sessions are held at the end of the project. Positioning

these sessions as such is presumably to allow participants to learn from

what went on during the project and avoid these same mistakes in the fu-

ture. The problem is that most people can’t remember what happened two

weeks ago, much less what happened six months or two years ago, so try-

ing to dredge up useful lessons learned over that time period is nearly

impossible.

■n The lessons learned are team-, project- or technology-specific. The major-

ity of the items that come up in a lessons-learned session are specific to

that project’s people and technologies. Often, a different team will be tack-

ling the next project, which comes with different issues, context and tech-

nologies. As a result, I find that any project-, team- or technology-specific

items are not useful in a lessons-learned context.

■n Items that are not project-specific are so vague as to be useless. In order

to deal with the above two issues, individuals will often generalize the


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3PROJECT MANAGEMENT

information to make it universally applicable to future projects—making

the information generic to the point of uselessness. I hear statements like,

“communication was a problem,” “stakeholders should be more involved,”

“budgets should have been more controlled,” and the like. While these

statements may be true, they make no note of the root cause or recom-

mendation for corrective action. How could they? Nearly every real prob-

lem that could or should be addressed to improve production is a tangled

web of interdependent issues, and every project has its own unique web of

problems, making general solutions very rare indeed.

WHAT LEAN OR AGILE APPROACHES CAN OFFER

There’s a fundamental difference between traditional lessons-learned ses-

sions and the corresponding Lean or Agile approach. Traditional sessions are

conducted to avoid making the same

mistakes on future projects that were

made on past projects. Lean and Agile

lessons-learned sessions—typically

called retrospective or Kaizen events—

are intended to make immediate im-

provements on current projects. Call

these sessions whatever you like, but

the latter approach encourages improv-

ing current project processes in incremental, real-time steps.

Changing the purpose and frequency of the lessons-learned sessions

resolves the three issues mentioned above:

■n The items identified are still specific to the team, project or technology, but

that’s OK because the team, project and technology are currently in flight

and the team has the knowledge and context to do something about per-

ceived problems immediately.

■n Sessions are held every two to four weeks throughout the project, resulting

Nearly every real prob lem that could or should be addressed to improve production is a tangled web of interdependent issues.


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3PROJECT MANAGEMENT

in three key outcomes: It’s much easier to remember what went well and

what needed improvement; items can be acted upon by the team that iden-

tified them in the context in which they have relevance; and another

session will follow in a couple of weeks, allowing the team to inspect the

results of its actions and adapt a new solution if the last one didn’t fix the

problem.

■n Vague solutions are less likely to emerge under the Lean or Agile approach,

wherein the meeting is not over until the problems, root causes and so-

lutions are made very clear and specific actions are planned to improve

matters. These actions are then reviewed at the next session to see if the

intended results occurred.

Anybody can improve his or her team’s ability to deliver project results by

understanding the benefits of Lean and Agile lessons-learned sessions, even

if the project is managed by a traditional approach. —Joseph Flahiff


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4AGILE METHODOLOGIES


Robert Kerner doesn’t waste time. The senior vice president and chief

digital officer at New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Euronext believes that in

this fast-paced, technical world, slowing down might as well be stopping. For

him, it’s a world that demands Agile development methodologies and trans-

parency. Those not on board should be prepared to step aside.

“Running a Web shop or a digital shop as a waterfall democracy, you’re go-

ing to be swallowed up and lose,” Kerner said. “To be successful in this space,

you have to be able to move where technology is going very quickly, and to do

that, we have an Agile development environment.”

Agile development methodologies were not the practice of choice in 2009,

when Kerner came to NYSE Euronext, a global security exchanges operator

and maker of trading technologies based in New York (it was acquired in De-

cember by Intercontinental Exchange Inc.). That lack of agility left the orga-

nization’s Web presence in a dire state.

One of the first things Kerner did was talk with his team and ask

questions.

“A question might have been, ‘How do you add a submenu to a menu?’ [on

one of our websites], and the developer on the floor told me it’s possible, but

it was very difficult to do,” Kerner said. “I asked him to show me exactly [how

it was done], and I ended up going through five levels of management before

I got to someone who could track the change. I knew at that moment this

wasn’t the way I wanted to run my shop.”

What he wanted was the ability to track changes quickly, to react on the

fly to what worked and what didn’t. Kerner turned to his CIO, seeking mil-

lions of dollars for a multiyear Web development project—and anticipating

1 1 A RC H I T E CT I N G A N AG I L E E N T E R P R I S E

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AGILE METHODOLOGIES




mounting a major defense for his proposal. Instead, he was told “do whatever

you need to do” to get off legacy content management systems (CMS) and

develop new websites to meet internal and external users’ needs.

Prior to Kerner’s arrival, NYSE Euronext had already spent significant

money and two years on a Web content management platform that failed to

meet business needs. They were looking for change that worked, and replac-

ing a longstanding waterfall development model with Agile development

methodologies was a place to start.

AGILE: MAJOR CULTURAL CHANGE REQUIRED

Getting the go-ahead was the easiest part, Kerner said—far easier than the

cultural change that had to follow. About 100 people, mostly contractors,

were let go.

“It’s really difficult to teach a team of that size to think agilely and get

the bureaucracy out of their minds,” Kerner said. “I had to change the cul-

ture to one of transparency and collab-

oration with the business and set the

processes accordingly.”

Moving to 100% transparency proved

particularly challenging given that metrics

that tracked individual team members’

day-to-day progress were established and

displayed publicly.

“For a lot of people, that kind of trans-

parency is too much, so they leave,” Kerner

said. “But I told the business, if they want to look at a line of code, they’re

welcome to it. They can look at any level of detail. I have nothing to hide.”

And those who chose to stay? Kerner came to find that they were

superstars.

“Only the really best people decide to stay and work in that environment

because they love transparency. They want to show off what they can do,”

Kerner said.

“For a lot of people, that kind of trans-parency is too much, so they leave.” —ROBERT KERNER, senior vice president and chief digital officer, NYSE Euronext


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AGILE METHODOLOGIES




MANY HAPPY RETURNS (ON INVESTMENT)

A review of the previous team’s process for selecting a new CMS under the

old waterfall method showed it had spent six months and likely plenty of

money measuring the pros and cons of each system—and still came to the

wrong decision, he said.

Kerner and his team spent about three days doing due diligence and mak-

ing phone calls to select a CMS.

“If I was going to come to the wrong decision, I didn’t want to spend that

much time doing it,” Kerner said. “We built failure into the plan, so we were

allowed to fail. Failure in an innovative space is a good thing. If you’re not

failing, you’re not innovating.”

A Drupal open source Web content

management platform was selected, and

Kerner promised that new capabilities

for its Web-based services would be out

in 30 days. In less than a month, a new

corporate blogging platform called Ex-

changes was up and running. Two

months later, new versions of NYSE Money Sense, a consumer-facing educa-

tional website, and NYSE Connect, a social site for NYSE-listed companies,

were overhauled and relaunched.

“I wanted to continue going linearly, but there was so much pent-up de-

mand around the business for a Web presence that everybody and their

brother wanted something,” Kerner said.

In retrospect, the company might have taken on too much: Kerner admits,

if he had to do it again, he would have gone for an approach emphasizing lin-

ear over exponential growth. Nevertheless, he’s pleased with having success-

fully relaunched 40 customer-facing and internal sites in a year and a half.

—Karen Goulart

In less than a month, a new corporate blogging platform called Exchanges was up and running.


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ABOUTTHE

AUTHORS

CHRISTINA TORODE is executive editor for SearchCIO.com. Write to her at [email protected].

JOSEPH FLAHIFF is president and CEO at Whitewater Projects Inc., a firm that provides Agile project training and consulting services to enterprise orga-nizations. He previously worked for a multistate health insurance company, providing Agile project management and training for a three-year, $20 mil-lion project that coordinated the work of more than 100 team members. Write to him at [email protected].

KAREN GOULART is features writer for SearchCIO.com. Write to her at [email protected].

Architecting an Agile Enterprise is a SearchCIO.com e-publication.

Rachel Lebeaux Managing Editor

Scot Petersen Editorial Director

Christina Torode Executive Editor

Joseph Flahiff Contributing Writer

Karen Goulart Features Writer

Linda Tucci News Director

Ben Cole Associate Editor

Linda Koury Director of Online Design

Corey Strader Director of Product Management

[email protected]

TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466

www.techtarget.com

© 2013 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.

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